ITM's Library of East Asian Medical Sciences

The Institute for Traditional Medicine has established a library of medical texts collected over the past twenty-five years. The library project was inspired by the extensive holdings gathered by Joseph Needham and his colleagues at Cambridge University in England and the collection started by Hong-yen Hsu and his associates at the Oriental Healing Arts Institute in California, each of which is comprised of thousands of titles.

ITM's more modest project includes 400 English language books, of which about 160 focus on Chinese herbal medicine and related medical information and theories, which has been the primary focus of ITM's work. There are also a few Chinese language books that are not mentioned in this document, including several large illustrated guides to medicinal materials. ITM has part or all of a collection of certain journals related to Chinese herbs and acupuncture, of which only three have current subscriptions, plus other journals that contain relevant information.

The following pages detail the English language books in the collection, providing for each the name of the book and its author(s), the publication date, publisher, and principal city for the publisher's distribution. The information is presented in the format that ITM has adopted for referencing books. Oriental names of authors have the family name first, but sometimes they are Westernized, placing the family name last (in such case, it is common, though not always the practice, to hyphenate the two personal names).

To make searching for titles easier, the books have been classified as follows:

Materia Medicas and other books that provide information about the traditional uses of individual medicinal materials.

Formularies that provide information about the content and applications of numerous traditional formulas, sometimes with modern formulas included.

Historical records, including translations of traditional texts, analysis of archeological and historical records, and discussions of the development of traditional Chinese medicine and its cultural context.

Clinical experience reports (herbal medicine), which represent suggestions for treatments of a large number of different diseases based on the experience of an individual practitioner or a group of practitioners who collaborated in writing about clinical efforts.

Acupuncture and moxibustion texts. There are dozens of books available on this subject, but many present essentially the same information; ITM's efforts have focused on herbal medicine rather than acupuncture, so this collection is somewhat limited.

Food as medicine books, depicting Oriental efforts to understand the health impact of foods. Some of these books review the historical developments of food use in China, with only passing reference to medicine.

General subjects, including overviews of Asian medicine, special topics within the field of Chinese medicine (including physiology and diagnosis), and general analysis of the application of herbs based on the theoretical framework applied mainly to traditional prescriptions, rather than direct clinical experience of the author(s).

Modern research on herbs, including analysis of chemical constituents, pharmacology experiments, and clinical trials.

Medical specialties that are the focus of the books in the library, including cancer, ophthalmology, pediatric disorders, gynecology, and dermatology.

Translation guides, dictionaries and books about Chinese characters-their origins, meaning, and uses-that can be used to investigate the implications of Chinese medical and philosophical terms.

Tibetan medicine books; Tibetan medicine incorporates both Ayurvedic and Chinese medical practices. Tibet has been incorporated into China during this century.

Ayurvedic medicine; Chinese medicine was partly influenced by the traditional medicine of India, with some of the herbs used by the Chinese coming from India. Like Chinese traditional medicine, Ayurvedic medicine has had a continuous history of theoretical developments, recorded experience, and professional training.

Western medicine; these are books that are used primarily for the purpose of brief description of disease characteristics and associated therapeutics, or studies of nutrients and herbal active ingredients that do not focus on Chinese herbs.

Journals of Chinese medicine; these are the journals that present information about Chinese herbs; many of them also contain articles about general Chinese medical subjects and acupuncture.

Other journals; these are journals that contain relevant information but are not specific to Chinese medicine.

The library is not a comprehensive collection of works on these subjects, partly because there are numerous books and journals that may be popular but do not have any scholarly or scientific orientation, and because others have a very limited scope. This listing includes the primary reference texts and journals used in producing the articles generated at ITM.

To assist practitioners of Chinese medicine in collecting their own library, the books have been given a rating in relation to their value for the study of Chinese medicine. This rating is placed either as a heading or as a code following the book information.

Essential Reading/Reference [ER]: Most practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine will find the information in the book of value in improving their background knowledge and capabilities. Only books that have general applications related to the traditional practices are listed as essential; if the book's contents are highly focused on a special subject, the book will usually be classified as advanced reading. Out of Print books are removed from the essential reading section, even if deemed quite valuable.

Recommended Reading/Reference [RR]: The books may cover much the same ground as others that are rated essential reading, but are less comprehensive or not as detailed. Still, these books may provide some additional insights, perspectives, specialty information, or expanded information that make them quite useful. Or, it may cover a subject of peripheral or more limited interest, but do so in an interesting way.

Advanced Reading/Reference [AR]: The book contains information that may be of value for the scholarly pursuit of the field, or for the pursuit of a specialty area within the field. Books that may have been designed for general use by practitioners but which fail to attain their goal and those that may require the judgment of well-educated readers to weed through the interpretations (some of which may be incorrect) or through difficult language may be classified as Advanced Reading.

Not Recommended [NR]: By comparison with other available books, the book does not provide much useful information for the practice of Chinese medicine (or other fields that shed light on that practice), and/or may be poorly written, and/or is too limited in scope or too out of date to be of value to the majority of practitioners. Books that are of particularly poor quality are not included in this reference list.

Out of Print [OP]: The book might only be found in a library, used book store, or by a book search service. The publisher no longer has copies available.

Clearly, there will be substantial differences in opinion about how these books ought to be rated; in fact, it was not always easy to place the books within one of the categories based on the criteria established here. These ratings are largely determined by the perceived ability to obtain information useful for producing the ITM articles about various Chinese medical subjects. Emphasis is placed on such features as: inclusion of quality translation work; comprehensiveness in dealing with the subject at hand; apparent reliability of the information presented; and readability. Sometimes, books containing valuable information may be recommended despite poor readability, and others that have reliable information may be deemed valuable despite lack of comprehensive approach or lack of complete faithfulness of translation. It is possible that a rating will be changed over time; for example, a book that is deemed essential may become out of date (and/or out of print) and may be superseded by another book on the same or similar subject that is better or, at the least, still available.

Generally, books that are well-translated Chinese medical classics and books that are written by Chinese experts with extensive experience will be rated as essential or recommended reading. Books by secondary authors, that is, those who have learned the subject relatively recently and have rushed ahead to write what they know, are generally not recommended.

Health care providers that prescribe Chinese herbs should develop a library that includes most of the essential reading books plus at least one or two of the "recommended reading" books from each category (at least from those that correspond to their scope of practice). A minimum library of about 35-40 such books in these categories would likely provide the resource information that is essential to conduct a successful practice.

The books listed in the following pages that are not out of print may be obtained either directly from the publisher or from one of the many distributors of Oriental medical books, including:

1. MATERIA MEDICAS AND GUIDES TO INDIVIDUAL HERBS

The most comprehensive guides to individual herbs with traditional indications and uses described are Thousand Formulas and Thousand Herbs, volume 1(listing 1,000 items); Oriental Materia Medica(765 items); Chinese Herbal Medicine Materia Medica (470 items); and Chinese-English Manual of Common-Used Herbs in Traditional Chinese Medicine (350 items). All of these present accurate and useful information though only one, Chinese Herbal Medicine Materia Medica, was written by Westerners and is accepted as a teaching text at American colleges of Oriental medicine. All of these guides will prove useful to practitioners, as they have notably differing presentation styles and some differences in content even for individual herbs. Oriental Materia Medicais relied upon extensively for the ITM literature and contains most of the herbs that are important to know, so is listed as an essential reference. Most of the other items in this section of the library present only a relatively small selection of herbs and present more limited information (and are therefore not recommended) or specialized information (and are deemed advanced reading) about the herbs.

2. FORMULARIES AND GUIDES TO FORMULATION

Books of formulas can be divided into three broad categories: those with the traditional formulas that are studied in China; the formulas that are used by Kanpo doctors in Japan (and similarly in Taiwan), which are mainly a subset of the former with a few items rarely discussed in China; and the patent formulas which include traditional and modern prescriptions that are manufactured by a large number of commercial enterprises. The principal books of Chinese herbal formulas and Kanpo formulas that are relied on at ITM are from the same publishers and are companion volumes to the Materia Medica guides mentioned above. In order from largest number of traditional formulas down, Thousand Formulas and Thousand Herbs, volume 2, Chinese Herbal Medicine: Formulas and Strategies, and Chinese-English Manual of Common-Used Prescriptions in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Commonly Used Chinese Herbal Formulas with Illustrations Companion Guide offers over 400 formulas that are mainly those used by Japanese Kanpo and Taiwanese practitioners. The older patent medicine guides are not very useful, due to the rapidly changing availability of the patents, changing and inaccurate labeling (relied upon by Western authors of the guides), and limited information about the formulation and uses. The new book by Fratkin resolves some of these problems, at least for now. Of the formula guides, only Chinese Herbal Medicine: Formulas and Strategies is listed as essential reading because of the presentation of a large number of formulas along with extensive descriptions for many of them.

3. HISTORICAL RECORDS

Practitioners of Chinese herbal medicine are expected to be familiar with the Nei Jing (which has two component parts, Su Wen and Ling Shu) and with the Shang Han Lun (also having two parts, Shang Han Lun and Jin Gui Yao Lue); additionally, it is helpful to be aware of one or more works of famous physicians, such as Li Dongyuan (a.k.a. Li Gao). Translation of these ancient texts is no easy matter. Chinese writing tends to be quite succinct and readers (especially translators) often read into the text things that may or may not have been intended by the original author(s). Often, the book that is being translated has already been modified from the original by Chinese authors who not only copied the text, but made corrections, re-arrangements, and interpretations. Despite some concerns about the translations, one volume each of the Nei Jing components have been rated as essential reading, and one volume each of the Shang Han Lun have been rated as recommended reading. Most others are either not recommended or are suggested only for those undertaking advanced studies; the exception is the unique work by Zhang Xuchun translated by Paul Unschuld under the title Forgotten Traditions of Ancient Chinese Medicine, which, I believe, provides valuable insights into the thinking about traditional Chinese medicine and the forces that shape it, and has been rated as essential reading (made easier by having available an inexpensive paperback version).

Essential Reading/Reference

Maoshing Ni, The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine: A New Translation of the Neijing Suwen with Commentary, 1995 Shambhala, Boston, MA.

4. CLINICAL EXPERIENCE WITH HERBS AND TREATMENT RECOMMENDATIONS

It has become common practice in China for physicians to compile suggestions of treatments-herbal formulas-based on what is done in their own practice or what is generally done at a hospital facility. These books may be compiled by experienced physicians or by young practitioners who report on what they have learned from their teachers. Frequently, these books are laid out according to disorder (a favored pattern is to deal with disorders of the body from top down, then general metabolic disorders, and then deal with specialty areas, such as gynecology, pediatrics, and "surgical problems"). There is a brief description of the etiology and manifestation of the disease, traditional sub-categories (e.g., liver fire, spleen weakness, liver/kidney deficiency), and one or more recommended formulas. In some books, a case study is presented, and this case usually shows that the prescription given to the patient is not the same as the one that has just been recommended in the book, but, rather, a derivative or modification. Unfortunately, it is difficult to rate any of these as essential reading, as they rarely provide sufficient insight, but some are recommended because the information presented appears to be a reliable reflection of modern Chinese practice.

5. ACUPUNCTURE AND MOXIBUSTION

The books included here fall into three broad categories: first, books that list each point (somewhat like the Materia Medica guides do for herbs) and present the relevant information; these books often also attach some information about treatment strategies; second, specialty books that deal with a particular type of therapy: ear acupuncture, scalp acupuncture, moxibustion, etc.; third, is books that are organized according to treatment of diseases (in these, it is assumed that the acupuncturist already knows about the individual points and the various treatment methods). For a book to be recommended, it must present both reliable standard and extensive information; there are plenty of books available that offer information that does not tie in to any standard theories or practices (the book is often highly personal) and several that provide too little detail to be of much use other than as a quick reminder for those who have learned the field very well (in which case, the book is probably not needed). Since acupuncture is usually practiced only after extensive training, the value of these books is to provide additional insights that might have been missed or forgotten.

6. FOOD AS MEDICINE

In China, the border between foods and medicines is indefinite. The principles of therapy governing herbs are the same as those governing foods. Therefore, the study of food from the Chinese perspective is valuable to those who prescribe herbs. The books listed here have very diverse nature; for example, The Food of China and Food in Chinese Culture are academic studies of the historical introduction and reliance on various foods with only passing mention of their medicinal value, while most of the other books are about using the foods for specific healing actions.

8. MODERN RESEARCH ON HERBS

Chemical, pharmacological, and clinical evaluation of herbs has been a major thrust of work in China (and other Asian countries, notably Japan) for fifty years. Additionally, during the past twenty years or so, Western researchers have taken up this subject. A difficulty with relying on books for this type of information is the rapidity with which they become outdated. The quality and type of research being conducted has improved greatly in recent years; this makes reliance on earlier and poorer quality research less useful. Still, while some areas of research are highly active, others are quite slow to show progress, so compilations of research in one place, as in some of these books, is a handy way to access it. Many of these books are already out of print, because research-oriented texts are usually produced in a single small print run. For practitioners who prescribe the herbs, these books will generally prove to be advanced reading; they are especially helpful to those who teach on the subject of research or who plan to conduct research. More up to date information is obtained from journals, though there are very few of them presenting full research reports in English. Unlike medical journals, these books always contain abstracted information and it is sometimes difficult to evaluate the validity and applicability of the reported findings.

Not Recommended

9. MEDICAL SPECIALTIES

Individuals seeking treatment by Chinese medicine often prefer to have a specialist trained in their particular area of concern. In the West, there is little specialization, but the need for detailed knowledge in several fields remains. Examples of specializations that appear in the literature are dermatology, rheumatology, ophthalmology, gynecology, and pediatrics. These books usually have the same basic characteristics as those described above under the heading "Clinical Experience." Cancer treatment with herbs is a major area of clinical practice in China and is of growing interest to Westerners. There has been a substantial change in emphasis in China, from use of herbs to treat cancer to use of herbs as an adjunct to cancer therapies. The book Treating Cancer with Chinese Herbs is an example of one reporting on treatments with herbs alone, while Cancer Treatment with Fu Zheng Pei Ben Principle is an example of one that is limited to addressing adverse effects of modern cancer therapies. Some of these books are guides to the individual herbs that may be used for either of these purposes, such as Anticancer Medicinal Herbs. To be recommended reading, the book must present extensive information about the herbs or substantial details about treatment strategies; due to the fact that these books involve specialization, none have been rated as essential reading.

10. TRANSLATION GUIDES

This section includes a wide range of books about Chinese characters, as well as some books that are specifically about Chinese medicine. Although practitioners of Chinese medicine can rely on dictionaries that translate terms from Chinese to English and English to Chinese, a knowledge of the basic Chinese characters may aid in deeper understanding of the concepts.

11. TIBETAN MEDICINE

Tibetan medicine is an integration of four traditions: Ayurvedic medicine and Buddhism from India, the pre-Buddhist shamanism that existed in Tibet, and Chinese medicine. Many of these books are difficult to obtain and provide limited information. However, for those who wish to know Tibetan medicine, a study of several of the books, especially those listed here as recommended reading, will provide a good overview.

Not Recommended

Lobsang Dolma Khangkar, Lectures on Tibetan Medicine, 1986 Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, New Delhi.

12. AYURVEDIC MEDICINE

Ayurvedic medicine differs markedly from Chinese medicine, but there are some areas of overlap: both systems were codified around the same time in civilizations at similar stages of development; both systems have many herbs in common; and both systems have strong emphasis on the value of food as medicine, the use of traditional formulations, and the application of physical exercises (e.g., yoga in India and taiji in China), and physical therapies (e.g., massage in India and acupuncture in China). A problem with Ayurvedic medicine that also plagues Chinese medicine, is that there are so many books produced that are not very true to the tradition. However, unlike Chinese medicine, which has a large and growing profession in the West, Ayurveda is mostly taught to laypersons outside of India, so the demand for rigorous training is less. This has some effect on the quality of publications. Only two books have been deemed essential reading: Ayurveda: Life, Health, Longevity (for background on the entire field of Ayurvedic medicine) and the Indian Materia Medica, which has a good overview of the individual herbs from the traditional viewpoint (it was written more than 75 years ago, though republished more recently), with mention of many valued herb combinations.

13. WESTERN HERBS AND WESTERN MEDICINE

When patients present their Western diagnosis, it is important for the practitioner of traditional medicine to understand it, be able to discuss the matter within certain limits, and, as may be necessary, explain the traditional treatment in relation to the Western diagnosis and treatment. Western medicine includes general understanding of diagnosis and treatment, as presented in guides and encyclopedias, and reference to specific treatment methods, including drugs, nutritional supplements, and herbs. Books that have been found valuable for ITM presentation of information about disorders are listed here.

14. JOURNALS OF CHINESE MEDICINE

Publishing a journal is an arduous task, and it is especially difficult when the number of subscribers is small (most journals of Chinese medicine number their subscribers only in the hundreds) and when the number of excellent reports is also small (few practitioners of Chinese medicine have received training that would lead to production of high quality reports). As a result, there are relatively few journals, and most of them have a short publication life. Following are the journals that have been received at ITM, either by subscription or donation. Though none are of such high quality as to be deemed essential reading, practitioners of Chinese medicine ought to have at least two research oriented journals, and (of the ones still available for subscription) the ones used most at ITM are Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the International Journal of Oriental Medicine, and the Journal of Integrated Traditional and Western Medicine.

15. OTHER JOURNALS

Although not devoted to Chinese medicine or even to natural medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) is strongly recommended for practitioners of Chinese medicine so that the latest advances in knowledge of medicine can be viewed. JAMA has recently published several articles on alternative medicine and provided clinical study reports about nutritional supplements and herbs.